Chapter 4
FOUR
If Charlotte thought her friend’s behaviour in her parlour was odd, she was tactful enough to say nothing about it. The trio of ladies walked at a gentle pace towards the village, each bearing a basket or two meant for someone in need.
When the baskets had been dispatched to their respective houses, the ladies turned back towards the parsonage. It was then that Elizabeth saw her. The lady.
She grabbed her friend’s arm. “Charlotte, who is that?” She made a discreet gesture towards the woman, who shuffled along the same street they trod.
“I believe her name is Grace.” Lowering her voice she added, “They say she used to be the town prostitute.”
Elizabeth gasped. “Surely not.”
Charlotte nodded. “Yes, and I believe she suffers from syphilis. Not always in her right mind, the poor dear. Do you want to come in and see Mrs Andrews with me?”
Elizabeth shook her head, a bit absently. “No, I believe I will wait out here.”
Maria chose to attend her sister, and shortly thereafter, the pair disappeared into a small cottage along the lane.
Elizabeth was left to contemplate Grace, who walked alone and moved very slowly.
Two village ladies walked past her, giving her wide berth.
Before Elizabeth could question her actions, she quickened her step and caught up with the lady.
“How do you do, ma’am,” she said, offering a friendly smile.
The woman came to an abrupt halt and turned to directly face her. Her eyes roamed over Elizabeth’s features but she said nothing.
“Do you remember me? We met by the well a little more than a week ago. I had thrown a letter in the well.”
The woman remained silent, and Elizabeth noticed a terrible smell which surrounded her. It had been some time since her last bath, to be sure.
“The letter was from a man, a man who had proposed to me? You asked if he was my lover, and I said that no, he was not my lover but he did, in fact, love me.”
The woman continued to gaze, somewhat blankly, at her. Elizabeth suppressed a sigh of frustration.
“I said that I wished for certain evils to be brought down upon his head, and in truth, I was only angry about something he said about my sister. Something I understood wrongly from how he meant it. In fact, I daresay I wrongly understood almost everything about him. He has met with a series of misfortunes, however, and I…I would like them to stop. I had hoped you might tell me how that could happen.”
The woman’s blank look had altered into something more like puzzlement, so much so that Elizabeth wondered if she had the right lady. Had she imagined the entire encounter?
“He is, it seems, a very good man,” she concluded softly. “And I was consumed by blind prejudice and did not see it.”
The lady continued to regard her in silence.
“B-but I can see that you do not know what I mean. Pray forgive me for having taken up?—”
“What the storm releases, the calm must gather.”
“What?”
The lady extended her hand and belatedly Elizabeth realised she wished for some payment. Fortunately, she had a few coins in her reticule, and even more fortunately, they appeared to satisfy the woman, who turned and walked away without a syllable more.
Hardly knowing what she did, Elizabeth began to move slowly down the lane in the direction of the parsonage. Charlotte and Maria would know where she had gone, she reasoned, once she realised they were not with her. In the meanwhile, however, she needed to think.
What the storm releases, the calm must gather.
She had expected something more arcane—an incantation, perhaps, or some instruction involving a moonlit hour and powder of newt for the reversal of what she had done. Instead, she had been given a riddle, and a somewhat obvious one at that.
He had proclaimed his love for her and she had cursed him. In fact she had cursed him long ago, had she not? ‘He has a very satirical eye, and if I do not begin by being impertinent myself, I shall soon grow afraid of him’.
I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, from the start!
It is such a spur to one’s genius, such an opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind.
One may be continually abusive without saying anything just; but one cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
It was then that she had cursed him, for not once had she allowed any measure of goodness in him.
Charlotte had provoked her with her insistence that he paid her a compliment in choosing to dance with her; that he called at the parsonage for her; that he looked at her, not to find fault but to admire.
But Charlotte was correct, and she would insist on being blind.
And now here he was, trapped in the parsonage house with a broken leg and ample time to ruminate upon the fact that the woman he loved despised him thoroughly.
If all of that is what has been released, then what must I gather?
She must gather him. Or rather—and she stopped here at the parsonage gate, pressing one hand against the post as the full weight of comprehension settled over her—she must give him the means to gather her.
She had tossed away his letter. She had refused his proposal.
She had, in every conceivable way, pushed him as far from her as it was possible to push a man and still have him remain in the same county.
What must I do? And how must it be done? For a moment, she wryly thought that she wished it might have been so easily resolved with some potion or another!